Jerome & Schwartz's Comic Song Folio: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

A book of sheet music with songs by William Jerome and Jean Schwartz. The "Comic Song Folio" was published by Shapiro, Bernstein, & Company. The front cover is printed in orange, dark green, and black with a floral vine behind two black-and-white portraits, the portrait on the left of Jerome and the portrait on the right of Schwartz. There are fifty-four (54) interior pages printed and numbered on both sides. The back cover has advertisements for other publications available from Shapiro, Bernstein, & Company printed in dark green ink. The pages are bound along the left side with string and there is black cloth binding adhered around them and underneath the front cover. The book contains fifteen (15) songs, including the minstrel songs "The Man Who Plays the Tambourine," "There'll Never be a Coon in the Presidential Chair," "Dusky Dudes Song," and "Looping the Loop." The latter two songs reference the cake walk.

Materials, dates and provenance

• Date: 1902
• Written by: William Jerome, American, 1865 - 1932
• Written by: Jean Schwartz, Hungarian American, 1878 - 1956
• Published by: Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., founded 1900
• Type: sheet music
• Medium: ink on paper
• Dimensions: H x W x D (closed): 12 × 9 3/8 × 1/4 in. (30.5 × 23.8 × 0.6 cm)
• Place printed: New York City, New York, United States, North and Central America
• Topic: African American
• Topic: Minstrel (Music)
• Topic: Politics
• Topic: Popular music
• Topic: Stereotypes
• Topic: U.S. History, 1865-1921
• Object number: 2016.166.32.2
• Credit Line: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from the Liljenquist Family Collection
• Data Source: National Museum of African American History and Culture

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of African American History and Culture through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed. The underlying object's rights statement is: Public domain Proper usage is the responsibility of the user.